


Roots

by meanderingsoul



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Gentleness, Home, Plans For The Future, Post-Season/Series 03, Sunsets, Travel, playing with hair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-09-30 23:38:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17233307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanderingsoul/pseuds/meanderingsoul
Summary: "I've liked getting to know on-holiday Jack. He's fun," she murmurs and feels him tense just a little under her hands, feels him swallow hard through the brush of her thumb at the back of his jaw.





	Roots

 

The air in Marrakech was warm in a different way than Casablanca, then Barcelona or a Melbourne summer.

No one knew them here, not a single soul. London had been a whirlwind of old acquaintances, anonymous crowds, and familial obligations both pleasant and unpleasant. France had old memories for both of them, some finally laid to rest and some better off forgotten, the experience brightened by two weekends spent with Jane. They’d spent less time in Spain than planned, only a few days in Casablanca.

This place felt like a dry island from the world. Or maybe a dream, though Phryne’d never been one who dreamt much in pictures.

The sunset had lured her back outside a while ago, leaving Jack to read in peace. They'd wandered all morning, dozed through the highest heat of the day in a half-dressed tangle.

He’d joined her eventually on their little hotel patio, but instead of taking the other chair he'd sat gracefully between her knees, her dress shifting up around the broad warmth of his shoulders. Jack’s hand curled gently around the bare skin of her ankle.

The light grew dimmer around them, ambers to cooler violets, silent except for bird chatter and the haunting sounds of the call to evening prayers.

Phryne wound one loose curl between her fingers. He'd let it grow longer on top, much easier to have her assist him to neaten the sides of it than to find a barber when you don't speak the language. Their Arabic was terrible, and her Spanish was middling.

"I've liked getting to know on-holiday Jack. He's fun," she murmurs and feels him tense just a little under her hands, feels him swallow hard through the brush of her thumb at the back of his jaw.

"You know he can't live in Melbourne, don't you? You understand I have to be more careful back... When I get back to work."

She wonders in the back of her mind why he didn't just say back home. It _is_ their home. She hadn't gone back to Melbourne intending to put down roots, only to visit Mac and attend to certain other obligations for the usual month or so, something she’d done every couple of years for ages, but roots had happened nonetheless.

Three years ago she never would have imagined any part of it could have made her so very happy.

"You know I'll have to get back to work as well. I’ve a business to think of, and lord knows what sort of obligations Aunt P will have waiting for me," she finished with a growl, threading her fingers back into the handful of chestnut silk she’d only just neatened.

" _Phryne_."

He only said her name, but she could hear all the layers to it easily enough, his pleasure at her fingertips on his scalp, fond exasperation, a tinge of nerves she should have expected.

But Phryne knew just as well as he did that their public personas have very different strictures upon them. "I hope you remember I enjoyed getting to know my dashing Detective Inspector Jack just as well?"

"Is that how that went?" he grumbled, but his head lolled sideways to rest warm against her bare thigh.

It's mostly been lovely, this trip, in ways she'd pictured and ways she hadn't. She’d towed him by the hands into the Globe Theatre with the most delighted look on his face she'd ever seen. There’d been the absolute disaster of teaching him to Charleston, though he’d still let her drag him out to clubs he couldn't have been seen in back home. The one overwhelmed little _scream_ she'd wrung from him in bed that was seared into her mind like a brand. That nasty fight in a stinking London back alley as he'd tried to explain what exactly being “kept” meant in his mind and how exactly that related to a Christmas present. The way he'd curl his long-boned frame against hers, drunk on absinthe in the aftermath of one of Guy and Isabella’s 'small' parties. How beautiful he looked lying naked in the afternoon sun.

They’d nearly a third of their loosely-scheduled wandering yet ahead of them and at least a week or two on a boat to follow that. There was time yet, for this version of them.

But Melbourne had her parlor waiting, _her_ parlor in _her_ house, the sort of house she’d dreamed of as a girl, the piano he could easily be convinced to play if the room was quiet, the draughts and chess boards in her cupboard. The thrill of working together where they knew every piece in the game, the dark streets and old grudges of their city. The rest of her family, already his too whether he realized it or not, Aunt P and red-raggers all the same. The entire rest of his life she hadn't gotten the chance to get to know yet.

It wasn't like it was a bad trade. Or even all that permanent. There was Sydney and Tasmania. New Zealand. Fiji. Places a little closer to home that they’d never been together or at all.

"Hmm. You know all that tells me Jack?" she purred, squeezing him a little closer with her knees.

"Dare I ask?"

But she could feel the twitch of his grin against her leg and curled forward to kiss his cheek.

"I'll just have to take you on holiday again sometime."

 

**Author's Note:**

> This show's been on my to-watch list for a couple years, but some gentle shoving from _you know who you are_ led to my devouring it in a week and a half while coming out the other side of two very bad-brain months. Binge watching this was definitely the right move. Totally what I needed to be doing. >_>
> 
> I haven't been so sucked into the world of a period drama since Life on Mars. Every character in this show was crafted with nuance and realistic flaws and the baggage of the times. I am really excited to get to explore some more of them with future fics. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! (Lord knows I've...read most of the fic for the fandom these last couple months. It was high time I gave something in return...)


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